September 2011 Newsletter
Jim Casada
Web site:
www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com
1250 Yorkdale Drive
E-mail: jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com
Rock Hill, SC 29730-7638
803-329-4354
Sweet September
For the last few mornings, when I headed outside for my normal late summer
routine of an hour or two of work in the garden or yard (three
acres of yard and garden together requires pretty steady
attention), there has been a hint of autumn in the air. I can
actually smell coming fall. In fact, was it somehow possible to
bottle that fragrance, I’d put it right up there in the perfume
sweepstakes alongside the first moments of a gentle rain after
an extended dry spell, the aroma of hyacinths in early spring,
the smell of kudzu blooms in September, or the odor of a
bustling bream bed in May.
Actually, the smell of kudzu blooms is about the only thing I can say
positive about that botanical nuisance from the devil’s garden,
and the smell of a bream bed is in truth anything but pleasant.
It’s just that the ripe odor bears such fine promise of a world
of fishing fun that I couldn’t resist including mention of
spawning bluegill and their sunfish brethren in my list of
appealing smells. Rest assured that a big old “titty” bream on a
lightweight fly rod or ultralight spinning gear is pure
pleasure, and if you don’t know what a titty bream is I’m going
to tell you. It’s a bluegill so big that when you get it to
shore or in the boat it is necessary to hold it against your
chest in order to remove the hook.
The first hints of fall, such as the touch of chill in the dawning hour,
are but one of many harbingers of good things to come. The
evening choir of katydids sings like there’s no tomorrow, and
for them there won’t actually be all that many tomorrows.
Already I’ve seen cardinal flowers and Joe Pye weed in bloom up
in the North Carolina high country. Ironweed, wild asters, and
fluttering monarch butterflies won’t be far behind. Doves
floating and dipping, darting and diving as they sail along the
tree line send a wonderful reminder that in just a couple of
days it will be “Christmas in September,” as a good buddy has
long styled it—the opening weekend of dove season. There’s
nothing quite like a red-hot, popcorn popper of a dove shoot
with its blend of camaraderie, fine food, dust devils dancing
across sere September fields, and the atmosphere of an old-time
family reunion. When that marvelously acrid aroma of burnt
gunpowder wafts through the air and fills your nostrils, you
know for sure that fall has come a-knocking on the door.
Yet those are but some of the sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of
September. In my back yard a pair of fig bushes hang heavy with
ripe fruit, and for once we haven’t had ill-timed, heavy rains
to make them split and rot. Close by are muscadines and
scuppernongs in great profusion. I have some twenty varieties
and do them right—pruning every January, good solid
stake-and-wire arrangements to support them, and proper care in
general. It’s a pure joy to pop a big old Black Fry muscadine in
one’s mouth, mash out and swallow the center, and then savor the
sugary sensation of the pulp from this sweetest of all the
muscadine line. Similarly, thoughts of a hull pie (see recipe
below) are enough to set my salivary glands running well beyond
the gustatory speed limit, and if you’ve never had a chilled
glass of scuppernong wine in the gloaming after a fine dove
shoot there’s some of life’s finer things yet before you.
The peak of the summer’s tomato harvest (see recipe below) has come and
gone, but I take considerable comfort in knowing that, tucked
away in our pair of upright freezers, there are dozens of
containers of Cherokee Purples and Lemon Boys, as well as a
yellow tomato with a Roma-like shape that is a marvelous but
most welcome mystery, awaiting colder days. They will be the
basis for many a tasty stew, pot of venison chili, or “catch
all” soup which blends whatever leftover vegetables are at hand
with ground venison and a pone of cornbread. There’s still a big
crop of crowder peas (or field peas, or clay peas, or cow
peas—depends on where you live, I reckon) just now reaching
maturity, we are getting enough eggplant for baba ganouche
galore (a great Mediterranean dish if you aren’t familiar with
it), and I’ve got the fall stuff in the ground. That means
broccoli, cabbage, kale, curly mustard, purple-top turnips,
black-seeded Simpson lettuce, and baby bok choi. Fall veggies
are always a bit problematic here—you have to nurse them a bit
until the nights get cooler, but if they can weather the early
heat shock they produce wonderfully well. |
On The News Front
Earlier today I had an e-mail from the folks
printing my long promised bibliography, The Literature of Turkey
Hunting: An Annotated Bibliography and Random Scribblings of a Sporting
Bibliophile telling me that the scheduled shipping date was
September 17. I’m pleased that pre-publication orders (at a savings of
$10) are now closing in on one hundred sales.
I will continue to take orders for the limited
edition book, with a slipcase, all edges gilt, ribbon marker, and
top-quality paper and binding, at the special price of $90. In effect
I’m covering the shipping and handling. Come September 20, the price
will be $100 postage paid. Meanwhile, you can save a bit of money, and
I’m assigning numbers as the orders arrive.
Thank You!
I owe a special “thank you” to those among my
esteemed readers who took the time to sign the petition I sent you a
couple of weeks back as a special e-mailing.
That petition, along with one other one, has
drawn more than 1,000 signatures. I have no idea how the bigwigs
overseeing the Great Smoky Mountains National Park will react, but I
have learned a lot in dealing with this issue. I’m left with a deep
distrust of bureaucrats, along with realization that they don’t give so
much as a second thought to obfuscation, misinformation, and sometimes
even outright lies. The only stench more odious comes from politicians—I
can live with an elected official who takes a stance, even if I
vehemently disagree with it, and states why that is his position. What
frosts my grits is the failure to return phone calls and answer e-mails,
a promise of things with absolutely no follow-through, and general
disinterest in much of anything that does somehow serve the politician’s
own interest or fatten his re-election coffers. No wonder we are in a
mess on the national level, not only economically but morally and in
many other ways.
There, I needed to get that off my chest and
let’s move on to more pleasant matters. It’s just that I’ve found the
occasional rant does me good, and I do firmly believe that when you are
passionate about something, you need to act. That’s what I’ve done in
this case, and rest assured dealing with swivel-seat swashbucklers who
likely couldn’t catch a trout on a dry fly to save their sorry tails and
probably have minimal backcountry camping experience has been anything
but fun.
Another Book In The Short Rows
I will give you a “heads up” about another book
which is presently in the publication short rows. It will bear the
simple, one-word title Passages.
The book is comprised of hundreds upon hundreds
of quotations from great outdoor writers. It is edited and compiled by
Chuck Weschsler (the Editor of Sporting Classics magazine) and
yours truly. The magazine, which I have long served as Editor at Large,
began its back page offering of pithy, powerful, or poignant quotations
better than two decades ago. The original concept was mine, and for a
few issues I supplied most if not all the material. Then it took off
like gangbusters as we offered a free year’s subscription to the
publication to anyone who submitted a quotation we used.
This book is comprised of the material Chuck
and I consider the best (i.e., our personal favorites), and I’ve written
an Introduction for the publication. Once it is out I’ll provide full
information on how to obtain a copy. |
Beyond the immediate home front, I’m beginning to think of deer. The
thoughts I had at lunch, when one came strolling by the garden, were not
good ones. By the time I could grab a gun (I have a depredation permit)
the doe was gone. Thankfully I’ve managed, thanks to an eight-foot high
fence, to keep them out of the garden thus far, but they’ve feasted on
apples, pears, and more. While I’m on bad animal vibes, if someone has a
real solution for squirrels, please let me know. I’ve been in an uneven
war with bushytails for years, and although it hurts my pride I must
admit that I’m in abject retreat bordering on total defeat. These
tree-top scoundrels are already into the pecans, they wiped out the
hazelnut crop, have made occasional forays on tomatoes, and it seems
like for every bushytail I shoot three more show up.
Back to deer though. Shooting lanes on my property—I can be in a stand 32
minutes after leaving home—are cut, I’m basically ready, and all that is
needed is some decent temperatures. Our bow season opens at mid-month,
followed by muzzleloading time the first of October and then a
gloriously long modern gun season which stretches to the beginning of
January. I’ll put my time in and there’ll be venison (see recipe below)
enough, but much of my time in the fall years involves meditation and
contemplation. I know of no finer place to think good thoughts, still a
turbulent soul, or just be at peace than in the woods as night gives way
to light or light yields to night. Often I don’t even get up in a tree.
I’ll pick a comfortable spot, build a bit of a make-shift blind, and
spend a couple of wonderful hours. Incidentally, I firmly believe that
if you go about it right hunting on the ground, whether stationery or
slipping ever so carefully and slowly through the woods, you can be
plenty successful. After all, that was the way it was done until a
couple of generations back.
Speaking of the generations which have gone before, late September was
always a time of nostalgia in my Smoky Mountain boyhood. Because school
had resumed, I was unable to spend as much time with Grandpa Joe and
Grandma Minnie as had been the case through the summer, but most
weekends would find me at their house for at least the better part of a
day. Grandpa and I would wander through the cornfield, with the “made”
ears of Hickory Cane already hanging down in the soft September sun. He
would pull back the shucks on two or three ears, survey what they
revealed, and then offer his opinion on the coming winter. “Thick shucks
always mean a hard winter,” he would say, and then he might add
something to the effect of “Look at that corn. Full right to the end of
the ear and perfect for fattening hogs in a couple of months.”
Mention of hogs would lead us onward towards the pig sty, but invariably
two things interceded along the way. We would stop several times for a
“bait” of ground cherries, which had fallen from the plants and provided
sweet golden morsels of pure goodness. Also, never one to waste energy,
even if nothing more was involved than a little walk around the place,
Grandpa would insist that both of us gather an armload of red-rooted pig
weed to feed the hogs. We’d also examine pumpkins, check on the status
of October beans, and maybe gather a bunch of tommytoes to munch on or
to feed the chickens. In case you weren’t raised on a farm or haven’t
had much exposure to free-range chickens, they flat-out love tomatoes.
In fact, they will eat them to the point they are, in Grandpa’s words,
“so poorly they can’t even think of laying an egg.” Accordingly, they
got the tommytoes as a treat, not a regular item of diet.
What I remember most about those rambles, however, was his talking of nut
trees. Grandpa had planted a row of black walnuts along the path which
led from the house to the chicken lot, and he never missed a chance to
point them out and say: “Those are trees for grandchildren.” What he
meant was that walnuts, while producing wood which is valuable indeed,
are slow growing. He knew he would never see them ready to be cut.
Today, almost three score years later, those walnut trees are still
standing. Some of them are fine indeed, offering two and in at least one
case three saw log lengths before the first limb and being straight as a
die in the bargain.
The old home place is long gone from family hands, but the current owner
has been kind enough to indulge me, on a couple of occasions, by
allowing me to take a walk down what for me is the most memorable of
memory lanes. There’s also a message here—if you have an old home place
where the earth and house are redolent of good times and fond
recollections, make every possible effort to keep it in the family.
Once Grandpa Joe had waxed eloquent on walnuts, we would begin making our
way back to the house and the pair of rocking chairs which set on the
porch. As these words are being typed I can look over my right shoulder
and see one of Grandpa’s rocking chairs, and just gazing on it is enough
to put a catch in my throat and a twinkle of the tearful sort in my eye.
Maybe that’s appropriate, because that’s exactly what with happen with
him on these rocking chair occasions. “Son,” he would commence while
cutting a chew of his dry twist tobacco, “when I was your age this was
the time of year when we began looking for the first chestnut burrs to
open.” He would then relate how the lordly American chestnut, that
monarch of Appalachian forests, reigned supreme. The nuts were gathered
in great quantities for storage, to sell at the train station, where
they were carried to roast chestnut vendors, and for a tasty addition to
the family’s diet (see recipe below). The trees provided a cash crop in
the form of “acid wood” for tanneries, were the wood of choice for fence
rails and roof shakes, and frequently figured in the construction of
barns and corn cribs. Hogs were turned lose to feast on the fallen mast,
and in Grandpa’s opinion “you never knew just how good pork could be
until you had fried tenderloin from a hog fattened on chestnuts.”
Today the American chestnut is long gone, having vanished from Appalachian
forests in the Smokies in the 1920s, victim of a deadly blight imported
from the Orient. Yet for all of Grandpa’s boyhood and the prime years of
his adulthood, the tree was an integral part of mountain life. He
couldn’t talk about it without getting choked up, and I think you have
to be someone who understands the concept of living close to, and in
close communion with, the good earth in order to appreciate his emotions
to the fullest extent. Grandpa was the simplest of men, and dirt poor in
terms of earthly possessions, yet in looking back I realize that he was
rich indeed in his knowledge of nature and the satisfaction he could get
from a simple meal, a fertile field, or a September stroll with a boy
who adored him.
Back to Top
SCUPPERNONG OR MUSCADINE PIE
Squeeze pulp from ripe scuppernongs or muscadines and discard inside (or
save it to make jelly). Do this gently in order to retain as much of the
juicy, sweet flesh attached to the hull. Do this until you have a pint
of hulls. Add three-fourths cup of sugar and stir in. Cook over gentle
heat until tenderized, adding half teaspoon of almond flavor and a half
stick of real butter as you do so. Once tenderized, add cornstarch to
thicken and as mixture begins to cool, pour over pie crust.
CHESTNUT DRESSING
American chestnuts are gone but Chinese chestnuts do well. I have close to
a dozen trees in my yard. The nut meats aren’t quite as sweet as those
of the American chestnut (you can still find one of bearing age
occasionally, although about the time it gets to that size it will die
back). We have chestnut dressing every Thanksgiving as a part of our
festive meal.
½ cup butter
1 cup finely chopped celery
1 cup finely chopped onion
1 cup cooked, chopped chestnuts
6-8 cups crumbs for homemade cornbread (use slow-ground meal)
1 egg, beaten
2 (or more) cups chicken broth
Salt, pepper, and if you like it (I don’t) sage to taste
Melt butter in skillet and sauté celery, onion and chestnuts. Cook slowly
over low heat for 10 minutes; stir frequently as this burns easily. Add
to cornbread crumbs in mixing bowl. Add beaten egg and brother; mix
well. Dressing must be VERY moist; add more liquid if necessary. Seas
and bake in casserole dish at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes or until
golden brown.
TOMATO-HERB SALSA
We always try to clean up the last of the previous season’s venison this
time of year, and most of it seems to end up in burgers. This recipe
offers a great way to jazz up a venison burger and use the sort of
garden truck likely still available.
Several fresh plum tomatoes or a bunch of tommytoes
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
1 shallot or mild onion, minced
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and black pepper to taste
Chop up tomatoes and drain the juice. Add other ingredients and mix. Serve
atop burgers. This salsa is also excellent on fish.
Back to Top
Thank you for subscribing to the
Jim Casada Outdoors
newsletter.
Feel free to contact Jim with your comments, questions
or suggestions at jc@jimcasadaoutdoors.com.
|